The three are among a contingent of at least 70
billionaires who are joining more than 2,500 business and
political leaders at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting
in Davos, Switzerland, this week, according to a list of
attendees and promotional materials obtained by Bloomberg News.
A half-dozen of the richest participants, interviewed in advance
of the conference, say economic disparity needs to be addressed.

“Many who will be in Davos are the people being blamed for
economic inequalities,” Oberoi, 42, chairman of Oberoi Realty
Ltd., India’s second-biggest real estate developer by market
value, said in an interview earlier this month by mobile phone
from his car in Mumbai. “I hope it’s not just about glamour and
people having a big party.”

Oberoi, who’s attending Davos for the first time, and like-minded billionaires may have trouble finding the subject of
income inequality on the agenda. While the forum’s Global Risks
2012 report, published this month, describes “severe income
disparity” as the world’s top risk over the next 10 years, tied
with fiscal imbalances and ahead of greenhouse-gas emissions,
the word “inequality” appears only once in the event’s 130-page program, and that’s in the title of a panel about art.

Remodeling Capitalism

Some sessions in a series labeled “Ensuring Inclusive
Growth and Development” will touch on income inequality, said
Kevin Steinberg, chief operating officer of the forum in the
U.S. A panel titled “Remodeling Capitalism” is scheduled for
Jan. 27 at the Swiss Alpine High School auditorium, six shuttle-bus stops away from the conference’s main location.

Last year, wealth disparities helped fuel protests from
Cairo to New York, and the Occupy Wall Street movement made the
richest 1 percent targets. That hasn’t gone unnoticed by some
Davos participants, including Azim Premji, 66, chairman of
Bangalore-based Wipro Ltd., India’s third-largest software
exporter, who in December 2010 transferred stock then worth $2
billion to a foundation that supports education for the poor.

“We have seen in 2011 what ignoring this aspect can result
in,” Premji wrote in an e-mail. “If we don’t take cognizance
of it and try to solve this problem, it can create a chaotic
upheaval globally.”

‘Distribution of Wealth’

That view was shared by Pinchuk, 51, founder of Interpipe,
a Ukrainian maker of steel pipes for the oil and gas industries,
who is attending Davos for the eighth time.

“The global social-economic order will change, if we want
it or not,” Pinchuk wrote in an e-mail. In a second e-mail, he
said businesses should concentrate on both maximizing profits
and assuring “a more just distribution of wealth.”

Pinchuk, who will host an event in Davos about philanthropy
moderated by Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Bill
Clinton, celebrated his 50th birthday in the French ski resort
of Courchevel in December 2010 with several hundred friends. The
party featured performances by Christina Aguilera and a troupe
of Cirque du Soleil acrobats, according to an account in the Los
Angeles Times. Dennis Kazvan, a spokesman for the Victor Pinchuk
Foundation, which is sponsoring the Davos event, declined to
comment about the party.

The best way to address tensions over income inequality,
Pinchuk said, is for conference-goers and complainers to chat.

“The Davos men are ready for such a dialog, even more than
the occupiers,” he said.

Camp Igloo

Some of those occupiers moved into what they call “Camp
Igloo” in Davos, where 155 centimeters (61 inches) of snow was
on the ground yesterday, the second-highest level recorded for a
Jan. 24 since the Institute of Snow and Avalanche Research,
based in the ski resort, started keeping records 66 years ago.

“This year, we will not let them exclude us, the 99%,”
the group, OccupyWEF, says on its website.

O’Brien, the Irish-born chairman and owner of Digicel Group
Ltd., a Kingston, Jamaica-based mobile-communications provider,
said the Occupy movement deserves encouragement.

“They believe the financial community has behaved
abominably, and some of them have,” O’Brien, 53, said in a
phone interview from London this month. “They are serious
people who have taken a stand, and they should be engaged.”

‘Last Continent’

O’Brien, whose company is worth about $4 billion, according
to data compiled by Bloomberg, plans to spend much of his time
in Davos encouraging European and Asian firms to build factories
in Haiti, where 80 percent of the population lives in poverty,
according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook.
Digicel, which has rebuilt more than 50 schools in the country
since a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in 2010, is the island’s
biggest employer.

“Corporations need to engage in giving a chunk of their
profits to social issues,” O’Brien said.

Some billionaires aren’t interested in talking about income
inequality or the Occupy movement at Davos.

“It’s all for the television cameras,” Henry Ross Perot
Jr., 53, chairman of Hillwood Development Corp., his family’s
real estate development firm, said in a phone interview from his
office in Dallas. “They usually tell the organizers when and
where they will protest in advance.”

Perot said he plans to attend lectures and investigate new
investment opportunities, especially in Africa, where he owns a
stake in safari operator Robin Hurt Ltd.

“That’s the last continent to have a boom,” said Perot,
whose father, Ross Perot, twice ran for U.S. President as an
independent candidate. “They certainly have the human capital
and natural resources. The question is do they have the
enlightened leaders to lead them there?”

Soros, Deripaska

Perot is one of at least 20 U.S. billionaires who will be
at Davos this year, the largest national contingent, according
to data compiled by Bloomberg. He’ll be joined by hedge-fund
managers Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors LP, Ray Dalio of
Bridgewater Associates LP and George Soros of Soros Fund
Management LLC.

Soros, 81, who has donated more than $8 billion to charity
and has been going to Davos for 20 years, has said he’s in favor
of increasing taxes on the rich. He “recognizes that income
inequality is a problem,” according to his spokesman, Michael
Vachon, who said Soros declined to comment further.

Bloomberg Poll

More than half of international investors say income
inequality hampers economic growth, according to a Bloomberg
survey published today. The Jan. 23-24 poll of 1,209 investors,
analysts and traders who are Bloomberg subscribers also found
that 31 percent don’t think it’s appropriate for government
policy to address the issue. Overall, almost one in three
surveyed back radical changes to the capitalist system.

The country with the second-highest number of billionaires
registered for the conference is India, with at least 16. Russia
will send at least 12, including Oleg Deripaska, chief executive
officer of United Co. Rusal, the world’s largest aluminum
producer, and Viktor Vekselberg, the company’s chairman, who
owns about 16 percent along with partners.

Vekselberg, 54, called on Davos’s “unprecedented
collective of the world’s influencers” to cooperate amid what
he described as a “very somber economic context.”

“In some cases, more impact can happen over a cup of
coffee than in days or weeks of formal discussions if the right
people connect,” he wrote in an e-mail.

‘New Ways Out’

Deripaska, 44, said if Davos participants can find “new
ways out of the global political and economy instability” at
this year’s meeting, “criticism will go down.”

One Russian 10-figure tycoon, Roustam Tariko, who controls
Russian Standard Corp., which has interests in banking and
vodka, wrote in an e-mail that economic equality will be one of
the most important issues at the conference and is “key not
only to domestic stability but also to the relationship between
the post-industrial world and developing countries.”

Tariko, 49, echoed Perot’s views about Occupy protesters.

“The current movement has no strategy and purpose and
hence doesn’t look serious to me,” he wrote.

Tariko said he’d rather talk about how political
instability is undermining the global economy. That would suit
Adi Godrej, chairman of Godrej Group, a Mumbai-based
conglomerate with interests ranging from chemicals to real
estate. He said delegates should focus on policy discussions
aimed at fixing the economy, especially in Asia.

China, India

“China and India must realize that a lot of global
recovery will be based on how well they implement reforms,”
said Godrej, 69, who called Davos “a good working holiday”
that saves him weeks of travel each year because of the number
of people he can see in a short period of time.

Still, many of the billionaires interviewed in advance of
the meeting said the widening gulf between rich and poor was a
great concern.

“These growing inequalities are not acceptable,” said
Rahul Bajaj, chairman of Bajaj Group, who valued his holdings in
the Mumbai-based conglomerate at $1 billion. “The rich have
done much better than the poor, and that creates problems.”

Bajaj, 73, who has been to Davos every year since 1979,
said economic development should be encouraged through a mix of
state and private-sector incentives. Governments could then
invest additional tax revenue in infrastructure, education, food
and water to benefit those below the poverty line, he said.

For Nicolas Berggruen, 50, who parlayed a trust fund worth
about $250,000 into a fortune of at least $2.5 billion,
according to data compiled by Bloomberg, policy discussions at
Davos have value. Berggruen, who has been called the “homeless
billionaire” because he roams the world in his Gulfstream IV
jet living out of five-star hotels, said he will mostly be a
listener in the conversation.

“There is a serious crisis of governance in the West, and
the U.S. has many misconceptions about China,” he said from a
hotel room in Singapore. “These issues lead to the symptoms
that cause movements like Occupy Wall Street. We must talk about
those symptoms. That makes Davos more relevant than ever.”